Online Security (Police)
Network Security
Safeguarding Systems Against the Latest Threats
Hackers, viruses, worms, denial of service attacks, and malicious code have
become increasingly commonplace in the past few years, putting a dark spin on
the Internet and instilling a sense of apprehension in the collective minds of
everyone connected to it.
Almost daily, headlines from around the world brim with horror stories of the
latest attacks to computer systems and services connected to the Web, of
database theft, or virtual vandalism to yet another Internet site of a high-profile
business or organization.
With reports of security compromises to official Web sites of the White House,
the FBI, NASA, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Senate, it seems that
no one with a Web presence is immune to attack, and, in fact, information
security experts and government officials continue to stress this is indeed the
current reality.
In the past several years alone, security breaches of individual computers,
networks, and the information they hold and transmit have reached epidemic
proportions. The number of known computer viruses surpassed 70,000 in
January 2002. Worldwide reportings of Web site defacements reached an alltime
high in September 2002—more than 9,000 attacks—according to the
London security consultant agency mi2g Ltd., and that figure is 54 percent higher
than August’s previous record-breaking tally of 5,830 defacements.1 Numbers
just released from the Computer Security Institute (CSI), put last year’s computer
crime losses at an estimated $455 million, up from $377 million in 2000.
With hackers repeatedly bringing such corporate giant Web sites as Yahoo,
Amazon.com and CNN to a standstill, organizations great and small are often left
wondering how much security is enough. The answer to this growing...
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